It is at this time, at the very height of this tension, that Mary Robinson—the former actress, fashion icon, celebrity sensation, and mistress of the Prince of Wales—debuted her two-act comedy Nobodyat London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The 29 November 1794 performance did not go well. “On the drawing up of the curtain,” Robinson recounts in her Memoirs,“women of distinguished rank hissed through their fans.” And while they were temporarily hushed, they soon resumed their vocalizations “with redoubled violence” (Memoirs 141). Dorothy Jordan, one of the play’s comic leads, became so “agitated” by the audience’s “ill-humour” that she omitted lines from the Epilogue and botched it altogether (The Sun). The Times reported that “the little effect intended, was utterly destroyed.” In the course of only three performances, Drury Lane increasingly “presented a scene of confusion,” with the final staging culminating in a near riot (Memoirs 142).

For modern readers, Nobody may appear merely to offer a lighthearted gibe at voguish faux pas. Fashionable life—comprised of narcissistic daily rituals, risible clothing choices, theatergoing, outings in carriages, and high-stakes gambling—proves, over the course of the drama, both farcical and foolhardy. But what Nobody’s riotous reception makes clear is that Robinson’s spotlighting of fashionable excess was no laughing matter, particularly for some of the play’s aristocratic spectators. Indeed, once the drama is placed within the timeframe of the French Revolution, it becomes clear that Robinson’s critique of fashion is, in fact, a political critique—one that links aristocratic behavior with the welfare of the nation, questions established social hierarchies, and advocates a more meritocratic form of leadership. Even more surprising than its message is that Robinson managed to get the drama staged at all. Produced during the time of the Licensing Act, Nobody reveals how playwrights found ways to circumvent censorship through allusive techniques—a fact that challenges the notion that licensed theater during this time was wholly apolitical.

Over the past twenty years, Robinson’s life and work have received fresh attention from scholars and biographers who have become fascinated, as her contemporaries once were, with her dazzling personality, social prowess, thespian skill, and literary artistry. Despite this resurgence in interest, however, relatively little is known about what was one of her most striking productions: Nobody. It is for this reason that I have recently recovered the play, the controversy surrounding it, and its socio-historical context by publishing an edition of it, along with explanatory notes, contemporary newspaper accounts, visual satire, and other relevant commentary on the academic website Romantic Circles.

Readers of the edition will notice that a central area of fashionable excess the comedy showcases is female gambling. In fact, Nobody focuses attention on the Faro Ladies—a notorious group of high-society women who regularly held gaming parties. Pre-show puffs for the play highlight this element of the comedy. Two-and-a-half weeks before its premiere, The Morning Post, for instance,observes,

The scarcity of Ladies in the lower Side Boxes, may be attributed to the rage from Plays amongst our Dames of haut ton. Faro, and rouge et noir, have wholly banished a gout for rational amusements. This is indeed a serious, disgraceful evil; that “has encreased, is encreasing, and ought to be diminished.” (10 Nov. 1794)

And after mentioning, in a separate issue, that upcoming soirées are to be hosted by Mrs. Concannon, Lady Buckinghamshire, and Lady Archer, The Morning Post remarks,

The proud excesses of the Gay World this Winter will occasion no inconsiderable number of Bankrupts the next. Since the War, the Tradesmen’s Books are over-laded with Debts, and if one of them should press a Nobleman for his money, he is immediately denounced, ‘a Jaçobine!’ (12 Nov. 1794)

Just days before the curtain rose on Nobody, The Morning Post optimistically proposed that dramatic comedy could prove “beneficial to Society” when “the preposterous manners of high life” and “Fashionable Folly” are “checked by the pen of fair and unoffending satire” (13 Nov. 1794). While Robinson certainly intended this outcome for her play, it was, perhaps, too lofty a goal. In the weeks following its condemnation, The Morning Post contained the following entry: “If certain persons, in high life, are allowed to damn every piece that aims to correct their follies, the Stage will cease to be the mirror of the times, and vice will triumph over public opinion” (9 Dec. 1794). While Nobody may not have achieved theatrical success, recovery of the drama reveals how it can yet serve as a “mirror of the times”—one in which domestic welfare contended with aristocratic vice.

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Terry F. Robinson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature, drama, and culture (c.1660-1830). Her current book project explores artistic innovation on the Romantic-period stage and page in light of eighteenth-century acting theory and practice. In addition to writing about theatre and drama, she writes about the history of the novel, arts and fashion, aesthetics, literature of empire, sexuality and gender, and women’s literature.